After the demonstration on Saturday & the silliness that followed from our 'anarchist' friends it dawned on me that I am more of a gradualist than I had previously thought.
It reminded me of a quote that I've noted down but for some reason didn't not down: "The greater the violence, the weaker the revolution".
The comments afterwards from people trying to draw similarites between a few idiots smashing up windows & scuffling with the police & Egypt also made me realise that if there's one thing that we really need it is a fucking sense of perspective. This is not Libya or Egypt. Yes, people die in police custody in this country. Yes, people get whacked about by police & sometimes its more about spite than about self-defence. Yes, the state does have a monopoly of violence but there aren't snipers on the roof or murderous attacks by supporters of Cameron-Clegg.
When you attend a demonstration in this country you do so expecting - at worst - to be kettled unfairly. So comparisons with movements in those countries where you are putting your life on the line in the name of basic democracy is a sad joke.
We are resisting cuts in a democracy. That democracy may have its problems but we have a ballot box we can use. And don't whinge about how 'all political parties are the same' because even if it were true you could get out there & found a party of your own. Or vote for one of the many, many electorally successful left-wing parties, like the SWP.
But apparently people don't feel change will come through the ballot box. Only a revolution will do. I'd ask these revolutionaries to take a look around & ask where the demand is for a left-wing revolution. It seems to me that it is the right that has been benefiting most from the financial crisis, which surely must make us on the left look around & wonder what the hell we're doing wrong.
The biggest crisis in capitalism since the pre-World War Two & the left has achieved...nothing much. If you can't convince people to get off their arses & vote for you then your revolution isn't going to be a popular one is it?
The press & politics might be stacked in favour of oligarchy but it isn't indestructable is it? Businesses might be avoiding tax but the best way to bring a business in to line is to stop buying their stuff.
I actually like UK Uncut. It has kept the issue alive, they're peaceful - whatever the press might have you believe - & they've been imaginative about some of their actions in a way that those people who think the way to get change is to smash a few windows, chuck some paint & try to thump a copper. We should build on their activities by boycotts.
So I believe you win by winning the arguement & through the ballot box. If we don't like our politicians, vote them out. Smashing shit up & hoping that people will rise up in your wake is vanity.
That doesn't make me a Tory.
I come from Buckinghamshire, the Toriest of Tory counties. My Mum & Dad vote Tory. Some of my best friends are Tories. But I'm not.
My dislike of the Tory Party is visceral & instinctive. It stared during the Miner's Strike, when I was 11 or 12. There seemed to be something wrong with a party that could laud Solidarity in Poland one day - that being a movement born from Polish Trade Unionism as much as anything - but treat its own workers like that. (I was a bit of a prig as a child)
My dislike for them has stayed the same ever since & it it influences my politics at a gut level. It's a willful political blindness, which I accept makes having proper political discussions difficult because in the end I don't like the Tory Party or it's policies for emotional reasons that I can't always articulate.
It's a weakness.
Articulating the alternative is essential if we are going to change things for the better & it is our inability to do that which has cost the left since the Berlin Wall fell. The internet gives us a better chance than ever to subvert the traditional media & get our message out there but we have to have an alternative that's more than empty slogans & broken glass.
We win when we win the arguements. Violence only hardens opinion & leads to more violence.
Rant over.
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